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On a world of intelligent robots who seem to have forgotten their own distant past, it is a time of war as the soldiers of Artemis City set out to conquer everything within range on the continent of Shull, killing or converting every robot they capture to their philosophy, while viewing their own wire-based minds as nothing but metal to be used or recycled for the cause.

Elsewhere, the more individualistic robots of Turing City believe they are something more than metal, but when the Artemisian robot Kavan sets out on a determined crusade to prove himself, even Turing City can't stand against him. Increasingly tied up with Kavan's destiny is Karel, a Turing robot with elements of Artemis's philosophy already woven into his mind ... as well as Karel's wife Susan, and their recently created child..

Following the inevitable violence and destruction, Artemisian ambition focuses elsewhere and a journey begins towards the frozen kingdoms of the north ... and towards the truth about the legendary 'Book of Robots', a text which may finally explain the real history of this strange world ...

In a completely alien but brilliantly realized landscape, here is a powerful story of superb action, barbaric cruelty and intense emotional impact.

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Tony Ballantyne writes high concept SF with some knowing in-jokes thrown in to boot, and I was intrigued to see where he would go with this start to a new trilogy.

The setting, on a world called Penrose (more on that shortly) is one where robots seemingly eveolved spontaneously, and where there is no intelligent organic life. The robots have emotions and male and female genders, and produce children - the male supplying a special metal wire and the female "twisting" it to form a new robotic mind. The mind produced has its characteristics decided by the way the mother performs the twisting, therefore creating a manufactured personality and even belief system.

This is an intruiging idea and Ballantyne uses it to explore concepts such as free will and totalitarianism. There is a considerable degree of action and good characterisation throughout.

There are some knowing in jokes too - in order to be admitted to Turing city, new robots are questioned to see if they are able to think, and the world the intelligent robots live on is named after Roger Penrose, who famously argued that artificial intellgence is impossible.

It is true that the mechanism by which robots become self aware is ignored, and other reviewers have criticised the book because of this. This is irrelevant to the story itself and even if the matter is not addressed in future books, I wonder if the concept of a single strand of metal forming the robots programming is a veiled reference to the archetypal Turing machine - it may be that the "twisting" we see from the robot perspective is not the true cause of intelligence, but the instructions embedded in the metal.

I would thoroughly recommend Twisted Metal and suspect there are many more revelations in store in the books to come.

Set on a world of advanced robotic civilisation, Twisted Metal starts with two robots making love and working to conceive a child. The male robot is then shot dead by a passing representative of an aggressive military state called Artemis. The mother is forced at gunpoint to twist metal and continue the conception process. Under these circumstances what kind of child will she create?

Karel is the product of that fateful day and he now works as an immigration officer in Turin City. His job is tough, and the pressure of the flood of migrants into Turin City is immense, exacerbated daily by the aggressive actions of the state of Artemis. Turin City is a prosperous state, with a strong belief in individuality and the value of the robot mind. Karel works hard to ensure those beliefs are upheld, against those who raise doubts not just about the immigrant robots, but the nature of his mind too.

Artemis is on the move, a rapidly expanding empire that conquers all for the glory of a simple philosophy, a philosophy that sees no value in the individual mind, but only in further expanding its own reach. It's a philosophy of submission and assimilation, not totally unlike that of the Borg in the Star Trek Universe. But the robots of Artemis do not exist in a literal hive mind. They are militant extremists, bound by their unyielding belief in a materialist philosophy, where no mind exists, only metal. When Artemisian war hero Kavan decides the time is right to take on Turin City, a battle begins not just for land and resources, but for the minds of all the robots in the Southern Continent of Shull - Karel's included.

I didn't know what to expect of this book. I was sent the sequel by publisher Tor, and generally when I receive a book for review that is part of a series I've not read, I put it to one side and then decide later whether or not to read the whole series from the beginning. This is what happened here, I thought this Penrose Series might be a little different from the other, mostly fantasy, series I was reading, and so I bought this first book to give it a try. I wasn't sure what I would make of it. The cover art causes the book to appear a little like a teenage novel, or even one of those adventure gamebooks that were popular in the eighties. I also imagined that it was possibly going to be akin to Transformers without the transforming, something like the war on Cybertron. I was wrong. The twisted metal of the title is not a reference to the damage caused by warring robots so much as it is the means by which a robot mind is woven. This is a book about the mind above all else.

Although written in a straightforward and easy to read prose style, Twisted Metal takes a bit of time to come together, and I wasn't immediately engaged by the characters. Still, in the first chapters I found enough of interest in the potential of the story. Later, the further I read, the more intrigued I became. The central premise once it takes shape is very good indeed. As the narrative developed, I was drawn into the questions of character and identity integral to the creation of a robot individual.

The robots are written in a very human way, and they have very human foibles. Despite this humanity as I've mentioned, it took me a bit of time to relate to the characters, but after a while I found a lot of empathy for Karel and his wife Susan in particular. There is another secondary character, Olam, whose story I enjoyed for the colour it added to the unfolding events. I thought the world building element of the novel was handled well, the few info-dumps did not distract me, and later I found myself keen to learn more about the other regions of Penrose. I liked the fact that each new area offered the promise of a totally unique way of viewing the world.

Twisted Metal is a novel about perspective. It can be read as an allegory in-part of ideological driven conflict such as the so-called war on terror. It also, like many other works with AI themes, explores the nature of consciousness, and free-will. The aspect of a parent choosing traits for the creation of an infant robot mind is particularly effective in this regard. There is a very definite acceleration in the development of this novel. The second half I found much more compelling than the first and despite that the conclusion is clearly that of the first book in a sequence, it is satisfying as well as a great tease for the next volume.

If I have given the impression that Twisted Metal is only about the mind and there is no action, then it should also be said that there IS plenty of action in this book, but that the action is not the main focus of the story, and I imagine someone looking for an action sci-fi par se might be disappointed. I certainly wasn't disappointed, and by the time I reached the end of the novel I was keen to read the sequel. This has been a surprising read for me, one I'm glad I took the risk to try. This isn't a pulpy robot smash em-up for teenagers, but an intelligent meditation on the nature of identity, consciousness and belief.

Amazingly this novel worked well despite being in many respects quite simliar to the first book. I would still have liked the book of robots to be explained a bit more particularly since this seemed to the point of existence for one section of the robot society. the appearance of the humans also seemed a bit baffling, why were they there? A nearly great read, well recommended.

I made the usual mistake here; I purchased the sequel `Blood And Iron' unwittingly, and so I then had to buy this, the first book. They were a waste of money...

`Twisted Metal' starts off very good and interesting. I was fascinated about a world with only robots. At first I also liked the fact that portions of chapters were split into sections dealing with each character, and you would be forgiven for thinking that this would make things easier to follow - not so... After several characters it gets a bit confusing, as each one has no real defining traits to keep them apart to begin with. I expected this to have become stronger much later, but by page 200 I was totally lost... I also found the story far less interesting by then too, and the reading became a labour... It's a great shame, as I really wanted to like this book and I did really like the idea of the world, concept and backdrop, but I felt the author tried to get a bit too clever with complexities that didn't feel necessary to me...

Not for me I'm afraid...

(IT SHOULD BE IN BOLD PRINT WHEN ANY BOOK IS PART OF A SERIES/TRILOGY)